7 Responses to “Great News!”

So it’s possible that the article is incorrect, and those troops are training to protect themselves in Egypt during the exercise. That would be a prudent move, especially given how low a priority civil disturbance training is in the military.

Bright Star! I remember when you could talk about operation Bright Star and you could talk about Egypt, but you couldn’t say that Operation Bright Star was in ____________ or else it would be classified.

The funniest story I ever heard was when Capt Bergman and I had lunch with a CH-53 driver who was in Egypt at Operation ________. They flew their birds to Egypt inside C-5A’s and pulled them out and reassembled them. Once they were done, they asked the tower for permission to take off. Tower said that he didn’t understand. They could not be at his air port because they hadn’t landed there. They tried and tried to explain but the tower continued to refuse permission because they hadn’t landed there and weren’t in his computer system.

Finally, they said screw it and took off without permission. After they landed they never had that problem again, because now they were in the computer.

Anyway, this story is not newsworthy. We had the US Army on the border there for at least three decades. So they’re getting riot training, what else is new? They also get anti-tank training, I’m sure.

As I was just saying on Twitter, in a horrible tragedy, an Arrow Air flight crashed in Gander, Newfoundland in Dec of 1985 with 248 Sinai peacekeepers onboard, killing ALL of them. This deployment is old news and a long standing commitment.

That very plane is the reason I hate to fly. A few months before, it had taken our squadron to Iwakuni on a WestPac in the ride from Hell. As a matter of fact, when we saw it parked on the tarmac at El Toro for the first time, collectively we were all, “So, when’s OUR plane get here?”, it was SUCH a wreck. I cannot express the horror when they ran the ramp ladder up to the doors and told us to climb aboard. Downhill from there.

I remember the stories of the Somalia deployment, wish I had joined in time. I especially remember the one about the Somalians being responsible for security, but we had an NCO or someone accompany the sergeant of the guard. When they reached one post, they found the Somalian guard asleep. Without even waking him up, the sergeant of the guard executed him with his pistol.

@tree hugging sister you are lucky you’ve never flown China airlines. Mostly know as CAAS – China Airlines Always Crashes. (Actually, they don’t – but their civilian airlines are flown by military pilots – and their flight paths will definitely give you the willies. As will their planes…Russian leftovers, mostly – at least back in the 80’s when I was there. Scary, but I’m still alive. Thankfully.